


i wish we never learned to fly

by elijupiter



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, It’s only hinted at tho, Pidge | Katie Holt-centric, Protective Shiro (Voltron), Sad Pidge | Katie Holt, Shiro (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Shiro (Voltron)-centric, Space Dad Shiro (Voltron)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-06-27 06:31:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19785169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elijupiter/pseuds/elijupiter
Summary: “sometimes, i wish i let you and matt and my dad stay dead.”or, the one where pidge never wanted to go to space.





	i wish we never learned to fly

**Author's Note:**

> title from i love you by billie eilish. this line stuck out to me when i was listening to it, and i ended up writing this angsty one shot all in one go, so enjoy, and message me on tumblr to request a fic or just to talk! @dumblesbianwrites - el <3

pidge had been quiet lately.

ever since they left olkarion, she had retreated into herself, opting to sit in silence rather than tease lance or discuss ideas with hunk. no one had really noticed - except shiro. 

he knew something was wrong. it was to be expected, of course; she’d just watched the ruins of her favourite planet be destroyed, with all of its residents missing. that was bound to take a toll on someone. still, shiro was worried about her. some days, despite her incredible strength and intellect, she seemed so small, so vulnerable. he wanted to help her, but didn’t know how.

it was sometime early in the morning - though it was hard to tell time when travelling through space - when shiro awoke to what sounded like crying. he blinked as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. for a second he began to panic, before he saw the faint green glow from the green lion’s cockpit. oh. that’s right. he was in the green lion. they were going home. he was safe.

and, it seemed, pidge was crying. shiro sat up, and the noises muffled themselves suddenly, as if she had pressed her hands over her mouth.

“pidge?” shiro murmured, his low voice breaking the silence. there was a sniffle, and then nothing.

“you know i’m not going back to sleep until you tell me what’s wrong.” he continued, only to be met with no reply. sighing, he shuffled from his makeshift bed on the floor, using muscle memory to navigate his way to the light panel. 

switching it on, he was met with the heartbreaking sight of pidge curled up in several blankets, both hands clamped over her mouth to dampen her cries as tears poured openly down her face.

“oh, katie.” was all shiro could manage to say. the use of her real name pushed pidge over the edge into another wave of tears, prompting shiro to sit beside her on her cot and open his arms to her. she fell into him with a broken cry, shucking her blankets away and pressing her head to his chest. 

“what happened? are you hurt?” he asked hesitantly, holding her with one hand on her shoulder and the other running through her hair. pidge’s answer came in the form of a rapidly shaken head, causing her tears to soak through his sleep shirt.

“is it about what happened on olkarion?” shiro added quietly. she whined into his shirt, confirming his suspicions.

“katie, i’m so sorry. i know how close you were with the olkari, with ryner. you didn’t deserve to lose them.” 

for the first time, pidge spoke up.

“it’s not fair.” she mumbled, barely audible.

“i know.”

“everyone is dying, shiro. we’ve been fighting the galra for years now, and people still keep dying. i’m sixteen years old and instead of a boyfriend, i have a bodycount. that’s- that’s not fair.”

shiro stayed quiet this time. pidge’s age slipped his mind more often than he cared to admit. sure, she hadn’t physically grown all that much since she was ten years old, but she had changed. and he didn’t just mean the solid muscle she had gained and the scars that littered her body. pidge was stronger, smarter, more powerful than he ever could have predicted all those years ago, before the kerberos mission that felt like a lifetime ago - to shiro at least, it was. she acted so mature and responsible that it was easy to forget how young the green paladin really was. when shiro was her age, he was still just a regular cadet at garrison. he’d never even stepped foot inside a ship. and yet, here pidge was, having sacrificed everything to save her family and fighting in a war with millions of casualties.

”you’re the least deserving of these circumstances out of all of us.” he admitted, pressing his chin to her head. “you lost your chance to be a kid, and you have no idea how terrible i feel about it. no one should have to go through what you did. no one.”

it took a minute for shiro to realise pidge was trembling beneath him. whether it was from the cold or her emotions, he couldn’t tell, so he grabbed one of her discarded blankets to cocoon her in.

“i have a secret. a really bad one, that i’ve never admitted to anyone.” pidge whispered. shiro could feel her breath against his neck.

“what is it?”

she cleared her throat before speaking, and tightened her grip on his arm.

“sometimes, i wish i let you and matt and my dad stay dead.”

there was silence. shiro swallowed around the painful lump in his throat.

“i-i don’t mean i regret finding you guys. it should have been impossible, and i’m so grateful that i still have my family. i just- i never wanted this. any of this. being caught in the crossfire of an intergalactic war sucks. but you and keith and lance and hunk - hell, even allura - you’ve all managed it so well. i haven’t. i should be so thankful for the opportunity to explore space the way we have. and yet, every night, i find myself wishing i could turn back time and just stay home.”

her words were interspersed with sniffles and hiccups, and her voice wavered as she spoke.

“you probably think i’m crazy for thinking this.” pidge muttered, glancing upwards at shiro.

“no.” was his hushed reply, meeting her gaze steadily.

“i know- i know what you mean. i get it. you know, i almost didn’t go on the kerberos mission at all.”

she interrupted him with a tiny gasp, an inhalation of surprise. he smiled thinly.

“i was sick. this degenerative disease with some complicated name i can never remember. i should still be sick, but whatever the galra did to me seemed to have gotten rid of it.” shiro sucked in a breath, feeling pidge’s weight rise and fall against his rib cage.

“anyway, iverson banned me from the mission. said my health was a liability. it was your father that stood up for me, katie. he marched into iverson’s office and demanded i be allowed to join, or he would resign.”

they both chuckled humourlessly.

“in the end, the decision came down to me. i wanted to go, obviously. it was my dream, and a once in a lifetime chance. but my ex fiancé, adam, didn’t. he was scared something would happen to me. we had a huge argument about it, and he broke off the engagement. he said he couldn’t marry a man that was going to kill himself for glory. and that,” shiro had to pause for air, emotion choking him. “was the last time i ever saw him.”

pidge hummed sadly. 

“i’m sorry, shiro. i-i didn’t know.”

he shook his head determinedly. 

“no, no. don’t apologise. that was my secret to bear. i made my choice, and i can’t change it now.”

“do you regret it?”

“hm?”

“going on the mission. do you regret it?”

it took a minute for shiro to collect his scattered thoughts enough to respond.

“that’s a tough one. if i’d stayed home, i would still have a fiancé, and an arm. i would have avoided being tortured and forced to battle as a gladiator for a year by the galra. but if i hadn’t have been there, the galra would have done the same to matt.”

pidge flinched at the mention of her brother’s name.

“so no, i don’t regret it. even though i suffered, i’ve been able to help so many people, save so many lives. i wouldn’t change that for the world.”

“oh.” pidge said. she seemed disappointed by his answer.

“what about you? do you regret coming to find us?”

“is it bad of me to say yeah?”

“of course not.” shiro replied automatically, but his tone was uneasy.

“then yeah. i do.” her voice was so small, he had to strain his ears to hear her.

“i never wanted to go to space. that was matt’s dream, not mine. i wanted to invent things, build cool robots, program new technology. but i wanted to do all that on earth. when i was little, i was even terrified of planes. and now i’m here.” pidge shook her head at herself with a wry grin.

shiro wasn’t sure what to say.

“i had... no idea.”

“i know. when i joined the garrison, it was just to find matt and my dad. it was easier to fit in if i pretended to have the same ambitions as everyone else. so i became a pilot. and now, years later, i keep telling myself that things would be better if i had cried myself to sleep that night when we found out the news. maybe then, i would have mourned you properly, and maybe then i could have moved on.”

“for the record, i’m glad you didn’t.”

he managed to get her to laugh, if only in between sobs. pidge untangled herself from him to look up at him properly without straining her neck.

“does that make me a bad person?”

“katie ‘pidge gunderson’ holt.” shiro said firmly, placing his large hand on her bony shoulder.

“you couldn’t be a bad person if you tried.”

pidge’s eyes were shining with tears as she hugged him suddenly around his waist. he scrambled to reciprocate, rubbing her back soothingly.

“can you promise me something, shiro?”

“of course. what is it?”

“once we get to earth, that’s it? no more flying, no more fighting. i... i just want to go home.”

shiro knew he shouldn’t agree. the universe needed voltron, and probably always would. it wouldn’t be that easy for pidge to just pass the baton on to someone else. still, he pressed a kiss to her forehead and squeezed her close.

“i promise, katie. i promise.”


End file.
